Preschoolers’ Implicit and Explicit False‐Belief Understanding: Relations With Complex Syntactical Mastery

Low, Jason

doi:10.1111/j.1467-8624.2009.01418.x

Cited by 136 publications

(181 citation statements)

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“…In line with this distinction, Low (2010) proposed that, whereas implicit false-belief understanding is sufficient for success in non-elicited-response tasks, explicit false-belief understanding is necessary for success at elicited-response tasks. In a series of experiments, Low administered a battery of tasks to 3-and 4-year-olds and obtained two main findings.…”

Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 87%

“…Low (2010) suggested that, early in life, infants occasionally encounter situations where an agent acts in an unexpected way (e.g., searches for an object in the wrong place), and they correctly infer that the agent is acting on a false belief (they may then reveal this implicit understanding in spontaneous anticipatory glances, pointing gestures, helping actions, and so on). However, because such inferences are uncommon-agents do not routinely act on false beliefs-this early false-belief understanding remains for several years local and piecemeal.…”

Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Another meaning of the term implicit (akin to procedural) refers to knowledge that has not yet been transformed into more advanced knowledge that is general and accessible and that can be verbally described-in other words, explicit knowledge (e.g., Karmiloff-Smith, 1992;Low, 2010). In line with this distinction, Low (2010) proposed that, whereas implicit false-belief understanding is sufficient for success in non-elicited-response tasks, explicit false-belief understanding is necessary for success at elicited-response tasks.…”

Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

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IntroductionConsider the following scene: A man wearing a backpack is pacing leisurely back and forth in a large airport room. As he strolls, he occasionally crosses his arms, twirls the dangling straps of his backpack, or stuffs his hands in his pant pockets. At one point, he sits down, takes off his backpack, and removes from it a bag filled with assorted gummy bears; as he peers intently inside the bag, he selects and eats, one at a time, five red gummy bears.As adults, we would have no difficulty interpreting the man's actions. We might view his initial actions-pacing, crossing his arms, and so on-as intentional (as opposed to accidental) though not as directed toward any particular goal. In contrast, we might perceive his subsequent actions-removing the bag of gummy bears from his backpack and eating five red ones in succession-as both intentional and goal-directed. In analyzing these actions, we might build an explanation that attributes to the man a causally coherent set of motivational and epistemic mental states: He wants to eat gummy bears, he is particularly fond of red ones, and so when he spies one in the bag, he removes it and eats it.Next, consider a new scene: As the man is happily chewing on red gummy bears, he notices a second man approaching who is carrying two heavy suitcases. At this point, our scene might unfold according to different scenarios. In one, the first man greets the second man, offers to carry one of the suitcases, and holds out his bag of gummy bears. In another scenario, the first man continues to watch the second man but makes no move to approach him. In yet another scenario, the first man sticks out a leg to trip the second man, causing him to fall heavily.As adults, we would interpret and evaluate the first man's actions in the three scenarios very differently. In the first scenario, we might infer that the two men have a social group in common: They might be friends, coworkers, or relatives, for example. In the second scenario, we 3 would conclude that the two men are strangers. In both the first and second scenarios, we would view the first man's behavior as acceptable: Offering help and sharing food are expected prosocial behaviors in interactions with ingroup, but not outgroup, individuals. In contrast, the first man's behavior in the third scenario would seem to us beyond the pale: Unprovoked harmful actions, even against outgroup individuals, are generally viewed as unacceptable. We would categorize the first man as an antisocial lout, and we might file away distinctive characteristics as possible markers of a social group to be avoided in the future.Our discussion of the two scenes above illustrates the rich analyses that adults spontaneously engage in when watching others act. What are the developmental origins of these interpretations? Over the past 25 years, there has been a great deal of research on social cognition in infancy. This research can be roughly organized into two sets of questions that map neatly onto the two scenes above. First, when watching an agen...

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Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 87%

Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Explicit-reasoning Accountmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Baillargeon¹,

Scott²,

He³

et al. 2015

APA Handbook of Personality and Social Psychology, Volume 1: Attitudes and Social Cognition.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Researchers argue that these skills are important precursors of a theory of mind (Legerstee) and serve as the basis for a more explicit understanding of mental states which emerges at the end of the preschool period (Legerstee, 2005;Low, 2010). It seems that "infants come prepared to interact with people" (Barna & Legerstee, 2005, p. 65, authors' italics) and, that, from early on, they are attentive to contextual information that facilitates the task of inferring other people's mental states.…”

Section: Descripciones Emocionales Y Factuales De Eventos Por Niños Pmentioning

confidence: 99%

Descrições emocionais e comportamentais de eventos por crianças pré-escolares

Pavarini

Souza

2012

Paidéia (Ribeirão Preto)

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Crianças em idade pré-escolar já se interessam pelos estados mentais alheios. O presente estudo teve por objetivo investigar se o interesse por estados mentais alheios se reflete nas preferências de crianças entre quatro e seis anos de idade por descrições emocionais e/ou comportamentais de eventos e se há correlação entre essas preferências e sua compreensão emocional. Trinta e sete crianças (21 meninas e 16 meninos) foram solicitadas a descrever quatro cenas de filmes e foram avaliadas quanto à compreensão de emoções. Os resultados revelaram um efeito de idade para a frequência de descrições emocionais, F(2, 34) = 6,7, p < 0,01, bem como uma correlação entre a frequência de descrições emocionais e o nível de compreensão emocional dos participantes, (r = 0,55, p < 0,001). Esses dados são consistentes com evidências de um aumento na produção espontânea de termos emocionais no período pré-escolar.

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“…A second hint comes from correlational studies comparing children's performance in SR-and ERFBTs (Grosse Wiesmann et al 2016;Low 2010). These studies found no stable relation between children's (implicit) predictive looking in SR-FBTs and their (explicit) verbal response in ER-FBTs.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

Fenici

Garofoli

2017

J Cult Cogn Sci

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According to the thesis of natural mindreading (NMRT), mindreading-i.e., the capacity to attribute mental states to predict and explain behavior-is an intrinsic component of the human biological endowment, thus being innately specified by natural selection within particular neurocognitive structures. In this article, we challenge the NMRT as a phylogenetic and ontogenetic account of the development of the socio-cognitive capacities of our species. In detail, we argue that basic capacities of social cognition (e.g., the traces of early systems of bodily ornamentation within the archeological record, and infants' selective attention at others' beliefs in spontaneous-response false belief tasks) do not involve meta-representational mindreading but are better explained by appealing to situated embodied capacities acquired in social interaction. While we acknowledge that more flexible capacities of social cognition (e.g., those implied by the use of political emblems in industrialized societies, or by 4-year-olds' success in elicitedresponse false belief tasks) involve genuine mindreading, we argue that this ability is elicited and scaffolded by linguistic communication. We conclude that mindreading has emerged as the outcome of a highly derivative long-term constructivist process of biocultural becoming that led to a relatively recent restructuring of the human mind in multiple worldly locations at different times. In particular, we conjecture that humans gradually converged on establishing linguistic practices allowing the understanding of others' actions in terms of mental reasons. These practices were bequeathed to further generations, and continue nowadays to scaffold the acquisition of mindreading in early childhood.

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Preschoolers’ Implicit and Explicit False‐Belief Understanding: Relations With Complex Syntactical Mastery

Cited by 136 publications

References 48 publications

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Psychological and sociomoral reasoning in infancy.

Descrições emocionais e comportamentais de eventos por crianças pré-escolares

The biocultural emergence of mindreading: integrating cognitive archaeology and human development

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